Learning Conversational English with Student-Generated Podcasts

A high percentage of international students in the United States enroll in English as a Second Language (ESL) courses or in the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs in many community colleges. These programs are faced with the need to integrate adequate instructional activities and performance-based assessments that help improve and accelerate language speaking skills to prepare students for the next academic level. The goal of this exploratory and descriptive developmental case study was to develop a class project with performance-based learning activities for an ESOL advanced level conversational class using podcasting technology and a constructivist instructional design approach. These activities were a series of five student-generated podcasts (scripted and unscripted) lab assignments. The findings documented that student-generated podcasts can affect conversational language skills in the pronunciation, fluency, grammar, and vocabulary domains; that students have positive attitudes toward the use of podcasting for language learning; and that using a constructivist instructional design model (CIDM) is effective in supporting authentic learning activities.